It is now twenty years since I first began working as a psychiatrist with people suffering from addictive disorders. From the first, this area of work was for me both a subject of academic inquiry as well as one of clinical endeavour on behalf of those who struggle within themselves. My Christian faith preceded this work, and in many ways motivated it, but it was only much later in life that I was drawn towards the study of academic theology. I was motivated in my studies both by an extension of academic curiosity to another way of understanding human experience and also by a belief that it is only in the light of the grace of God in Christ that we can fully and truly understand our experience as human beings in this world. That belief has not fundamentally changed, but it has grown as I have attempted to explore the nature of human experience as biological, social and psychological as well as spiritual, in its relation to the incarnation of God in Christ. In theological terms, it seems to me that the grace of God in Christ is the hermeneutical key to understanding human being.

The hermeneutical task in theology is often, although by no means always, concerned with texts.